SCC gym move intended to temper violence

 After about 24 years of inmates navigating paths through stands of bunk beds, the gymnasium at Sierra Conservation Center stands empty, part of a statewide effort to make prisons safer and healthier for inmates and staff.

The prison used the gym for so called “emergency beds” or “bad beds” — extra housing needed due to overcrowding.
 

"The impacts because of overcrowding are just enormous actually, and it’s not the ideal way to house inmates,” said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The department issued a directive in February, ordering the prison west of Jamestown to empty the gym, said SCC spokesman Lt. Kevin Wise. Officials have gradually moved inmates housed in the gym into its dormitories.

It did this by reducing the number of inmates it takes in as others were transferred to its fire camp program or released on parole.

The Mariposa section of the prison, which houses its medium-security inmates, primarily absorbed those that were in the gym.

The gym was originally constructed to be used for recreation activities for inmates, such as basketball, boxing and movie nights. The last time it was used as a gym was in the summer of 1985, Wise said.    

Combined with an earlier shift of inmates out of day rooms, the prison population is down about 400 inmates, Wise said.

The population reduction means the prison needs less personnel to supervise the inmates. Officials have moved 20 staff members to vacancies elsewhere in the prison.

“That doesn’t mean that we had to lay staff off,” Wise said. “What it means is that we lost some positions.”

At the same time, SCC had a staffing increase in its medical department, which allowed it to put personnel into some of those positions, Wise said. Had that not occurred, the prison would still not have had to lay anyone off, he said.

Eliminating the emergency beds has been the state’s goal since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order in October 2006, Thornton said.

At the time, the state’s prison population was nearing record highs.

“Those are safety and security risks you are taking not only with the inmates but with the employees, too,” Thornton said.

It also raises health concerns. Where inmates are housed in triple bunks or crammed into gymnasiums and day rooms, illness spreads faster, she said.

It also reduces the places prisons can hold rehabilitative programs, Thornton said.

For the past three years, prisons across the state have been trying to eliminate those beds — primarily by transferring inmates to prisons the department is contracting with in Arizona, Mississippi, Tennessee and Oklahoma, she said.
  

The state has reduced the number of emergency beds from its high in August 2007 of 19,618 to 10,921, she said.

“That has relieved overcrowding in our prisons, and we have been able to empty out our gyms,” she said.